When Play It as It Lays emerged on the literary scene, it drew comparisons to the works of Nathanael West, particularly noted by John Leonard, who remarked, “There hasn’t been another writer of Joan Didion’s quality since Nathanael West.” This analogy is fitting, given that Didion’s novel is considered a quintessential Hollywood narrative, echoing West’s The Day of the Locust from 1939. The era of transition to sound films in the late 1920s and early 1930s attracted many gifted writers to Hollywood with its promise of opportunity. Among them, West crafted cynical, satirical tales that unmasked the superficial glitz and underlying decadence of Tinseltown. Play It as It Lays resonates deeply with this tradition.

Nevertheless, to confine Play It as It Lays to the category of anti-Hollywood fiction would be to oversimplify its scope. The narrative unfolds more within an existential vacuum than in the sun-soaked glamour of Southern California. The roots of BZ’s despair and Maria’s numb detachment extend beyond the superficialities of Hollywood, delving into more profound themes of existential angst. Didion herself has critiqued the notion of “Hollywood the Destroyer” in her essays, suggesting a more complex disillusionment at play.

In this particular novel, Didion’s perspective eclipses the defiant humanism of Camus and the apocalyptic cynicism characteristic of West. Maria Wyeth, the protagonist, embodies a profound passivity, a paralysis of moral and spiritual dimensions that renders even the concept of death as a final escape seem like a trite resolution. Her inability to succumb to the dramatic rituals of death or to explode in a frenzy of chaos, as seen in West’s characters, underscores a stark, resigned inertia.

Leonard draws an intriguing parallel between Didion’s stark vision and that of T. S. Eliot’s in The Waste Land, noting that Didion’s prose is “as bleak and precise” as Eliot’s poetry. This comparison highlights the novel’s exploration of desolation and the complexity of human despair, transcending the superficial veneer of Hollywood’s glamour and digging deep into the core of existential dread.